ABSTRACT
This chapter offers important support for systems of pluralism and liberty of conscience. The new order is designed to be a "system of natural liberty", fitted to the nature of free persons, capable of governing themselves through reflection and choice. In appealing to "liberty", the American framers did not mean any liberty, such as egoism or licentiousness, but rather-as Pope John Paul II noted in Miami in the autumn of 1987-"ordered liberty". A classic American hymn defines such ordered liberty simply: "Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law". A system constituted by democracy, by the exercise of private initiative in economics, and by religious liberty, is intended for relentless criticism. Those who value the liberal society may rejoice that so many central liberal ideals are slowly gaining acceptance, one by one, in Church's continuing reflection. The Pope looks at liberty, stressing that the development of peoples or nations should include individual cultural identity and openness to transcendent.
